The Literal Interpretation of Myth: The Mayan Example

An excerpt from, “A Jungian interpretation of Popol Vuh, a Mayan Myth” By Dr. Victor Bodo, September 16, 2024:

Popol Vuh is a Mayan myth that describes the hero twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, who descend to Xibalba, overcoming various tests to ultimately triumph over the lords of the underworld.

The twins are the sons of the goddess Xquic, who becomes pregnant after an encounter with the severed head of the god Hunahpu. Their birth is a miraculous event, setting the stage for their future heroics.

Their heroic journey begins with the Hero Twins seeking to avenge their father, who had been defeated by the lords of Xibalba, the Mayan underworld.

Xibalba is a dark, treacherous place ruled by powerful and malevolent deities who challenge anyone who dares to enter. To reach and ultimately confront the lords of Xibalba, the brothers must first endure a series of trials and tritribulations. 

An excerpt from, “Child sacrifices at famed Maya site were all boys, many closely related” By Bruce Bower, ScienceNews, June 12, 2024:

Genetic clues have unveiled a type of ritual child sacrifice at an ancient Maya site that consisted only of young boys, often chosen as closely related pairs that included twins.

The discovery stems from a burial of more than 100 people in an underground chamber discovered in 1967 at Chichén Itzá, a once dominant Maya city in what’s now Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. Chichén Itzá reached its pinnacle between around A.D. 800 and A.D. 1000, as many Maya cities in Mexico and Central America fell on hard times or were abandoned (SN: 12/4/23).

DNA from 64 remains in the chamber pegs the bodies as males, challenging an earlier idea that females sacrificed in fertility rites were interred there, archaeogeneticist Rodrigo Barquera and colleagues report June 12 in Nature.

Boys identified in the new study ranged in age from 3 to 6, based on their tooth development. Around one-quarter had a brother or other close relative among those with analyzed DNA. Chemical analyses of diet-related substances in bones found that closely related boys had consumed similar types and proportions of foods, a sign of having grown up in the same households. Related children included two sets of identical twins.

“This is the first evidence of Maya sacrifices involving twins, which were important for Maya [beliefs about the universe],” says Barquera, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.